Joanna Lovinger, MFT

01/30/2026

12/18/2025

This is such a hard time of year. The days are shorter and colder. The news is unrelentingly bad. And our holiday expectations are rarely met. But people with treatment-resistant depression feel bad all year long. Therapy and medication aren’t working, and they doubt that they’ll ever feel better again.

But there is reason to hope, in the form of this clinically-proven, groundbreaking, and often misunderstood treatment.

Do you have severe, treatment-resistant depression? That’s the term to describe when you’ve tried all the anti-depressants on the market (SSRIs or SNRIs) but they’re not helping. Or when you go to therapy sessions for years but feel stuck. It’s a brutal, unrelenting darkness, a persistent sa...

12/07/2025

It's no joke: ketamine is a safe and effective treatment with potentially life-saving benefits. But if the media keeps using it as a punchline, I worry that people who could use the help will miss out.

ketamine as a punchline Dec 7 Written By Joanna Lovinger It's no joke: ketamine is a safe and effective treatment with potentially life-saving benefits. But if the media keeps using it as a punchline, I worry that people who could use the help will miss out.Don’t come at me, but I just rewatched s...

12/06/2025

People are starting to go to jail in connection with Matthew Perry's passing two years ago. I’ll leave it up to others to decide whether or not Plasencia’s sentencing was fair.

The story behind this celebrity death is tragic for many reasons, but the one I discuss in this blog post is the perpetuation of a “party drug” stigma; that ketamine is taken by over-indulged addicts like Perry and Elon Musk. But negative publicity about ketamine obscures its use as a tool for healing.

I’m still upset about Matthew Perry’s death in October 2023. And it’s not just because he died too young, which he did. Or because he was talented or - by all accounts - a sweet guy. I’m upset because I suspect he wasn’t the only casualty that night on his back yard pool deck. People strug...

12/04/2025

Do you struggle with procrastination? Imposter syndrome? Rejection sensitivity? A vicious inner critic? Congratulations - you may be an artist. :)

12/04/2025

In my work as a therapist who specializes in artists, artificial intelligence comes up as a topic over and over in sessions. The writers, animators, graphic artists and others are terrified that their jobs will be redundant. And I understand but I don't agree. See what I mean.

12/04/2025

Revealing my "tricks of the trade" in dealing with resistant clients.

12/01/2025

I enjoyed being a guest on OKOP Show, tackling the very heavy topics of birth trauma, adoption trauma, unresolved loss.

11/30/2025

With just one day left in National Adoption Awareness Month, here's a clip from a recent guest appearance on the OK Storytime podcast. I respond to a post from a birth mother/bio mother who regrets her decision to place a child with an adoptive family.

This is an incredibly complex and tragic story. If the poster were my client and I knew her personally, I'd have taken a more nuanced approach. And I'll add that chatting about the post in this casual way seems to ignore the deep pain at the root of this story. My lighthearted demeanor stems not from wanting to minimize the OPs loss, but an attempt to match the tone of the OKOP Show.

People who advocate for family preservation over adoption and those who want to abolish private adoption - considering it no better than a "baby market" - would use this OP's story as an example of birth parents/first parents who should have been given resources to be able to raise the child on their own. Instead of using this podcast visit to advocate for abolishing adoption, I chose to respond to the OPs story on an emotional level, covering:

birth parents' grief after placement
birth parents' lack of control when it comes to adoptive families
Adoptive families reneging on an open adoption agreements
birth parents' regretting the family chosen for placement
birth father rights
centering adoptees needs
and acknowledging the tragic story behind every adoption

btw I reference "PMDD" at one point but what I meant to say was "PPD." Oops. I was more nervous than I might look. 😬

11/30/2025

In a society that values conformity and obedience, the individual who dares to think for themselves is often ostracized and ridiculed. These nonconformists, these outcasts, are the true pioneers of society, the ones who push us to question our assumptions and expand our horizons. They are the ones who are not afraid to be different, to be themselves.
If you find yourself feeling like an outsider, like you don't fit in with the crowd, that's a good thing. It means that you have the potential to make a real difference in the world. Don't be afraid to be yourself, to follow your own path. The world needs your unique perspective. ~Timothy Leary

08/07/2025

06/14/2025

Here’s a blog post I wrote about compulsive smartphone use. Perhaps you’ll find it has some relevance to your life?

Maybe dissociation serves a purpose. We live in an unstable and often terrifying world. Looked at this way, it makes sense that we’re all staring glassy-eyed into an alternate universe. The volatility and instability in the U.S. and around the world are too much for most of us to process.